Sidewalk Art

The lamentable state of Russia’s roads and sidewalks has long been fertile ground for memes and jokes. Irkutsk artist Ivan Kravchenko decided to turn the problem into an art project. For over two years he has been patching ruts in city sidewalks with colorful ceramic tiles.

If you plug in the hashtag #заплатки_для_города (“patches for the city”) on Instagram, you will see several dozen photos in which eye-catching “patches” stand out against a background of grey, chipped sidewalk. The Instagram account dares followers to undertake something of a quest: artist Ivan Kravchenko posts photos of his latest installations and challenges his followers to find them.

“A lot of people don’t stop there, and they start trying to track down earlier examples of my work around the city. They send me direct messages and send photographic proof,” Kravchenko says. “I totally love the idea of a quest and am only sorry that it was not me but my subscribers who thought it up.”

When he finished high school, Kravchenko never suspected he would become a ceramics artist. He actually entered Irkutsk State Transport University with the intention of studying mechanical engineering and robotics. But during his third year he realized he had chosen the wrong path. Bored with his studies, he often found himself sketching in the margins of his notebooks, and his friends praised the art they saw there.

But he did not think his home town of Irkutsk offered any prospects for a career in art, so at some point he typed into a search engine, “how to make it as an artist.” This led him to an article about a woman in Irkutsk who said she was willing to help artists who were just starting out. So Kravchenko photographed some of his work and emailed it to the address provided in the article. And the reply surprised him: the woman said she could see that his work was at a high level, yet recommended that he take up ceramics.

“And I thought, ‘What stupid advice!’ I want to be an artist, and she is writing to me about ceramics,” Kravchenko laughs. “And I quickly forgot about the letter. Then I left mechanical engineering and robotics for the department of monumental art at the polytechnical university, where I audited courses. About three years later, I found a job in a ceramics shop, at which point I remembered the advice I had received, but no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find that woman’s contact information. My correspondence with her had vanished.”

Kravchenko soon realized that ceramics was a mix of the technical and the artistic. In order to optimize the process, you had to be at once an inventor and an artist. And so, over the course of six years, he gained extensive experience, progressing from mass production to individual ceramic works and teaching.

The Patches for the City project was born in 2018. Feeling a strong attachment to his native Irkutsk, Kravchenko sometimes led tours through the city’s back streets. Once, walking past a historical building that had long since been in need of restoration, he imagined placing a ceramic tile, crafted to look like a bloodstain, into the side of the building. Of course, the building was a protected cultural monument, and thus under the control of the state, which would need to agree to any sort of repairs or renovations. And the state would, of course, never approve something so insulting as a bloodstain. But Kravchenko also noticed that there was a rut in the sidewalk, and thought that maybe he could “patch” it.

Over the past two years, Kravchenko has installed some 40 ceramic patches. Mainly the works are abstract, yet there are also pieces that have specific subject matter, often related to that particular location.

“For example, at one bus stop, I patched the sidewalk with a work depicting the last pazik,” the iconic PAZ-3205 minibus. “It is a mystical image, sort of like a ghost ship. When you are waiting for the last pazik, you never know if it is going to come or not. It might break down, or the driver might decide not to run the route, so he can get home to his wife early. I dedicated this patch to the residents of the part of town served by this minibus. It is worth noting that a week after it was installed it was stolen.”

Kravchenko makes all of his works eye-catching. He only embeds them in sidewalks, since ceramic tile would not withstand road traffic. And even in pedestrian zones, his ceramics do not last more than a year.

The ceramicist also adheres to certain rules: the hole must have well-defined edges and be between 10-20 centimeters (4-8 inches) in diameter. And, most important, it should attract attention.

“If I feel that the patch will fit harmoniously
into that particular place, beautifying the public space, I don’t do it. It should be visible amid the dirt
and grime of the street. This is because the project has two specific goals: first, to focus city residents’ attention on the problem; second, to show that anyone can do something for their local region if they have the will.”

It takes Kravchenko about a week to make each patch. First, he traces the outlines of the hole onto paper. Then he goes to his workshop, where he rolls out the clay and transfers the traced shape to it. The result is a clay patch, which becomes ceramic after firing. Then he covers it with a design and fires it a second time. After glazing, the patch is ready.

Since cement is used to affix the tiles, patching can only take place when it is above freezing. Otherwise, the water in the cement will freeze, which will stop the curing process and compromise both strength and durability.

Kravchenko does not seek permission from the city for his patch work, as he does not feel he is in any way negatively impacting city property. He has received a variety of official reactions to his work, but as yet no problems have arisen. Yet, given the popularity of the works in the city, any fine levied against him would likely cause an outcry and needlessly turn people against the mayor’s office.

“Last year, when I was outside Irkutsk, there was a funny incident,” Kravchenko recalls. “They called from the city administration and said, ‘What’s going on? Why are people demanding that the patches be put back?’ It turned out that on one street where I patched some holes, they were doing repairs, and residents started demanding that my patches be left in place. But it is technically impossible to lay new asphalt around them! Nevertheless, there were so many complaints that the authorities made a concession: the contractor carefully removed the patches and sent them to a warehouse. Of course, I did not go and pick them up, because I cannot put them someplace new. Each one is unique.”

At first, Kravchenko wanted his project to be unique to Irkutsk, yet soon he realized he should not limit himself to one city. Recently, some of the first patches have appeared in Moscow, on Sparrow Hills and the Arbat.

Again, the artist did not seek permission for the installations, yet the city also did not issue him any fines. Perhaps this is because Muscovites have already taken a shine to his work and have joined in the quest to find his patches.

The ceramicist plans to link future installations to his other project, “Ustye,” an artists’ residence that he created on the shores of Lake Baikal. It is a place where artists can live for free, realize their ideas, and where tourists can enjoy nature while studying under professional artists.

“Every artist can make patches of their own design and install them in any city,” Kravchenko explains. “I hope that this will help us better focus the attention of bureaucrats on the problem of Russia’s roads, and perhaps resolve it.”